The Virginian

Friday, April 30, 2010

NEW YORK, April 29 (UPI) -- Seven in 10 U.S. adults support arresting people who can't prove they're in the United States legally, a poll about Arizona's new immigration law indicated.

Unlike the so-called "health care" law that was passed over the DISAPPROVAL of most Americans, the Arizona law has overwhelming approval. It's hard to get 70% of the people to agree to anything. This is a landslide that's only "controversial" in the minds of the MSM and organized illegal alien groups.

So, get over it, you 30% losers. The law's the law. don't even think about repeal. The debate is over. Shut up.

How "the culture" shapes perception.

Ann Coulter comments on the Wall Street Bailout bill being pushed by the Democrats. She ends with a joke told by Jay Leno showing two things:
a) the writers for Jay Leno are incredibly stupid
b) the writers for Jay Leno are part of the culture that informs the uninformed.

In 2008, Goldman employees gave a record-breaking $1,007,370 to the Obama campaign.

This year, the "securities and investment" industry has already given twice as much money to the Democrats as to the Republicans.

ABC News reports that "the five biggest hedge fund donors all gave almost all their donations to Democrats." Among the biggest recipients of hedge fund money were Senators Harry Reid (Democrat), Chris Dodd (Democrat) and Charles Schumer (Democrat).

Even with the evidence right in front of their eyes, people still believe that it's the Republicans who are in Wall Street's pocket.

How out of touch with reality would a comedy writer have to be to write the following joke for Jay Leno this week: "The head of Goldman Sachs was going through security and was asked to empty his pockets -- and five Republican senators fell out."

Why didn't Barack Obama or Chuck Schumer fall out? Why not Rahm Emanuel, who worked for Goldman? Or Greg Craig, who used to work for Obama but just took a job with Goldman?

The fact that anyone laughed at that joke proves that Republicans have a serious PR problem.

What could be better for the Democrats; they get most of the Wall Street money and Republicans get blamed for being on Wall Street's pocket?

So, are the people like Leno and his writers evil or stupid? The joke would have been funny if the word "republicans" were removed. As it is, it's one more nail in the coffin of perception.

The tea party movement is another perfectly middle-class phenomenon that sets off fires of indignation with the liberals. I could understand if they simply disagreed with the tea partyers. The tea partyers favor freedom, limited government, low taxes and addressing the staggering debt that government is piling up. These are values that liberals do not champion. But the liberals have to go further, depicting the tea partyers as violent racists. Once again we see how fluently the liberals lie, starting by lying to themselves.

The crowd carried signs with messages ranging from “Give Us Liberty Not Debt” to yellow flags saying “Don’t Tread On Me.”

Urged on by people with megaphones, the crowd shouted slogans, among them “Remember in November” and “You work for us.”…

There were a few tense moments when the crowd moved west down York toward Third Street after the president’s motorcade arrived. A Secret Service agent asked the crowd to move back across the street to the north side.When the crowd didn’t move and began singing “God Bless, America” and the national anthem, Quincy Deputy Police Chief Ron Dreyer called for members of the Mobile Field Force to walk up the street.

The cops were there for only 15 minutes but that was long enough for comedy gold. If you think the video’s funny, wait until you see Gateway Pundit’s photos. Calling all cars: Be on the lookout for an insurrectionist with blue hair…

Who gave the order to call in the riot police on protesters? Word is that Secret Service from inside the venue and the presidential team pressured local law enforcement, who were against the idea. Local cops were overruled, I’m told by various sources, including a few members of local press. Moore reported that she overheard Secret Service telling the riot squad to “push them back, out of sight.“

Intimidation tactic. Plain and simple. There was no violence, no arguments, just a couple hundred patriots who sang patriotic songs and wore red, white, and blue. Unbelievable.

Doug Edelman identifies this man as the one who called in the riot squad and said to “push them back, out of sight.”

Testifying before a judge in a bail hearing, the lead FBI invertigator draws a blank when it comes to facts about the so-called "Hutaree militia":

An FBI agent who led the investigation of nine Michigan militia members charged with trying to launch war against the federal government couldn't recall many details of the two-year probe yesterday during questioning by defense lawyers.

Even the judge who must decide whether to release the nine until trial was puzzled.

"I share the frustrations of the defense team … that she doesn't know anything," U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts said after agent Leslie Larsen confessed she hadn't reviewed her notes recently and couldn't remember specific details of the case.

For forever, Republicans and Conservatives have cowered as they were accused of racism. A popular governor of Virginia, George Allen, was defeated for using the term "macaca" which was interpreted by the Liberal press as a racist term.

Do you know what "macaca" means? Have you ever heard it used as a racist term? Me neither. But no matter. If the Liberal press calls you a racist, you had to bow down and apologize. And you had to hope that people would forget, which the MSM would not allow, until after their particular battle, be it an election or issue was won in their favor.

Tweeted a response to Breitbart about the lack of takers on the bounty: "I think you've pretty much won this one, no?"

No, Ben. We will not have won until scum like you grovel. Until we hear an apology which we won't accept because we won't accept "sorry if I offended anyone" from dirtbags like you. Your lies will follow you around like a bad smell; people will see you coming and walk on the osther side of the steet. They will shun your kids once they know that their father or mother is a journalist.

Won this one? Ben, it hasn't even begun. The issue won't go aaway because you want it to go. This will be the scandal that boomerangs. Big Time!

No, I'm not talking about the swastikas the pro-illegal rioters painted on government buildings.

My comment is directed at the Progressives who label the supporters of the new law on illegal immigration "Nazis." It seems that - not only are 70% of all Arizonans in favor of the law (the Nazis never had that level of support before) but a majority of Latinos do also. Does that make Latinos "Nazis?"

The assumption that Democrats "win" on the immigration issue is counter-intutive. Most people oppose illegal immigration. I'm an immigrant and know lots of other immigrants. We are even more opposed to illegal immigration than the average American who did not immigrate. We followed the rules, we stood in line. Now we see others cutting in line ahead of us and people like us. Unlike Americans who never had to stand in line to be citizens, we are even more outraged.

But the assumption is made that Latinos will side with fellow Latinos in a show of racial or ethnic solidarity. Don't be so sure. In fact, legal Latino immigrants are more disadvantaged than native Americans by illegal immigration. Those are "their" jobs that are being taken by illegals who will do day labor without paying taxes at very low wages. It is in their communities that most of the violent crime takes place. It is they who are suspected of being illegal by the white and black community. They understand the impact of illegal immigration better than most, much better than the fat assed bigots who draw the cartoons or write the editorials without having to compete for jobs with illegal immigrants.

So what do the polls say? Rasmussen did a poll and here is the breakdown:
Among Whites, 73% favor and 20% oppose the law.
Among Blacks, 50% favor and 50% oppose the law.
Among "Other," 63% favor, 36% oppose the law.
Who or what ethnic group in Arizona do you imagine "other" refers to? There are not that many Eskimos in Arizona.

Haters On The March: “Heavens! The extremists are in the streets again. As I write, racially motivated opponents of Arizona’s new law that is intended to curb illegal immigration are festooning the state Capitol with swastikas — swastikas! — made of refried beans and are planning legal action to block the law from taking effect. The world’s most buffoonsh political figure, the ‘Rev.’ Al Sharpton, has called for a boycott and is said (though this cannot be confirmed at press time) to be calling on Tawana Brawley to speak at an anti-anti-imigration rally. Naturally, The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, and kindred media outlets are set to repudiate these new outbreaks of hate and racist incitements to violence, narrow-mindedness, bigotry, etc., etc. Look for it tomorrow on the Daily KOS and other web sites dedicated to rooting out irrational prejudice and exposing the sore losers who don’t understand that elections have consequences and who won’t give a new law a chance but who divisively call for the repeal of the will of the people.”

More:

I see the haters are out there again, up to their old tricks. Why, there was Al Sharpton and his gang out there in the streets of Phoenix denouncing people who disagree with them in the most vile terms. Where does this hatred come from? It’s downright un-American. Think of it, marching in the streets, denouncing government and attacking laws, using hyperbole and exaggeration. This is bound to hurt them. And the worst thing is — they’re calling for the repeal of a law that was just signed. They won’t even give it a chance, and they refused to compromise before it was passed. Now, this is doubly un-American: protesting a law, denouncing government, and actually calling for the repeal of a law that was passed by a constitutional majority. I’ve seen everything now. I’m sure Al Sharpton and his gang are going to get it in the press for daring to do anything so far outside our traditions of fair play and democratic government. Where are the leaders calling on them to stop? Nancy Pelosi should get on television right now to tell them to stop before they hurt someone. And if someone gets hurt, it will be her fault, also the fault of CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN for encouraging them. It can’t be long now before Al Sharpton is compared to those nasty tea-party people.

On April 13, 2010 he told AP reporter Jesse Washington, “I think we need to move toward a dialogue that explores why this kind of divisive and reprehensible language is still making it into our political debate.”

The “divisive and reprehensible language” that Rep. Carson is referring to is his claim that while he left the Cannon office building on March 20 with Rep. John Lewis, they were verbally assaulted by health care protesters hurling the “N-word” at them. He said the scene was so hostile he “expected rocks to come” when he was coming out of Cannon.

I wanted to see the evidence. I wanted the truth. In the course of our search we have actually uncovered further video evidence that casts serious doubt on Rep.Carson’s claims:

Now this story is much more important than the accusation of fifteen racists among the thousands of protesters that day. This is now about the accusers.

Monday, April 26, 2010

By the way, this is not something you will not read in your local paper, which is why the newspaper business is on life support.

Previously unreleased documents supplied to The Washington Times reveal that GM specifically used funds it received from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to pay off the government loan. According to Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for TARP, $4.7 billion of $6.7 billion - 70 percent - of what GM paid back came from TARP money the company received. "The one thing a lot of people overlook with this is where they got the money to pay the loan," Mr. Barofsky told Fox News' Neil Cavuto on Wednesday. "It isn't from earnings." The numbers are based on a quarterly report Mr. Barofsky's office provided to Congress last week.

Despite administration denials, the inspector general proves that GM paid off its loan with government money.

The watchdog, however, won't budge. When asked how to tell whether the $4.7 billion used to pay off the government loan came from TARP funds and not some other source, a spokesman for the Special Inspector General's Office explained: "We have a letter from General Motors requesting that they take the money out of escrow and pay the other debt down. And the money in the escrow was clearly TARP funding." That letter has been released by the Special Inspector General's Office.

So far this year, 113 people have been killed across Chicago, the same number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined in the same period, Fritchey said.

The really, really bad new is that the people who are in charge of solving this problem are Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, "Father" Pfleger, Joseph Lowery, Harry Belafonte, Cornel West, and Louis Farrakhan.

Heaven help Chicagoans, because they are about to see hell unleashed.

Earlier this month ABC News described efforts by Chicago residents to persuade officials to let them arm themselves against the crime wave. They are going to the US Supreme Court to force the city to let exercise their Constitutional rights. “Otis McDonald, 76, is afraid for his life in his crime-saturated Chicago neighborhood and he is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his city’s strict ban on handguns in the home.”

...What can go wrong? What happens next? Will there soon be serious proposals to use unmanned surveillance technology in urban settings? Requests for intelligence support? Anyone who thinks this can’t happen should think again. The real price of fantasy public fixes like Green Jobs or gun control to stop drug gangs in Chicago or describing those who want to stop illegal immigration as Nazis is that, by making common sense impossible, they make the use of overwhelming stupidity inevitable. If the Republic dies it will have committed suicide. RIP, SOS. Rest in Peace, Stuck on Stupid.

Well, yes. Eventually all the die-hard Liberals will be left and they won't stop subscribing until death do them part.

More details on the good news:

Figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show average weekday circulation fell 8.7 percent in the six months that ended March 31, compared with the same period a year earlier. Sunday circulation fell 6.5 percent.

That's a slight improvement from April through September of last year, when average weekday circulation dropped 10.6 percent from a year earlier and Sunday circulation fell 7.5 percent.

Even so, the top 25 newspapers in the country showed some huge circulation losses.

The San Francisco Chronicle's weekday circulation dropped nearly 23 percent from the year before to 241,330. At The Washington Post, average weekday circulation fell 13.1 percent to 578,482 and dropped 8.2 percent to 797,679 on Sundays.

USA Today lost 13.6 percent of its circulation and averaged 1.83 million. That extended a slump that began with a slowdown in travel during the recession, which trimmed sales where USA Today is especially popular, such as hotels and airports.

Barack Obama is more irritating than the other nuisances on the left. Nancy Pelosi needs a session on the ducking stool, of course. But everyone with an ugly divorce has had a Nancy. She’s vexatious and expensive to get rid of, but it’s not like we give a damn about her. Harry Reid is going house-to-house selling nothing anybody wants. Slam the door on him and the neighbor’s Rottweiler will do the rest. And Barney Frank is self-punishing. Imagine being trapped inside Barney Frank.

The secret to the Obama annoyance is snotty lecturing. His tone of voice sends us back to the worst place in college. We sit once more packed into the vast, dreary confines of a freshman survey course—“Rocks for Jocks,” “Nuts and Sluts,” “Darkness at Noon.” At the lectern is a twerp of a grad student—the prototypical A student—insecure, overbearing, full of himself and contempt for his students. All we want is an easy three credits to fulfill a curriculum requirement in science, social science, or fine arts. We’ve got a mimeographed copy of last year’s final with multiple choice answers already written on our wrists. The grad student could skip his classes, the way we intend to, but there the s.o.b. is, taking attendance. (How else to explain this year’s census?)

Utopia--President Obama signed an agreement with Utopia today in which the mythical ideal society agreed to supply the United States with all the goods and services it would need during America's transition to a system of more government control and less personal responsibility.

Utopia also agreed to take part in an educational exchange program in which dissent would be replaced with an equally distributed admiration for America's platonic leader.

"Under this inter-idealization agreement," said Obama, "Utopia has agreed to produce for us whatever used to be the product of individual initiative, the drive for personal fulfillment, and the free enterprise system. I am pleased to sign this fiction into law."

Young’s worry is confirmed by this remarkable report from Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin:

As for why Syria seems to be playing such an unhelpful role, “that’s the million-dollar question,” the [Obama administration] official said….”We do not understand Syrian intentions. No one does, and until we get to that question we can never get to the root of the problem,” the official said. “Until then it’s all damage control.”

This is quite simply amazing. The Assads, father and now son, have run the same foreign policy for decades. It is a very simple model, and one that gets discussed in detail on a regular basis: They are the arsonists who sell water to the fire department. The administration official should start his odyssey of discovery by reading Bret Stephens’s 2009 Commentary essay, “The Syrian Temptation — and Why Obama Must Resist It.”

Bashar is a promoter of a remarkable array of death and destruction in the Middle East: killing American soldiers in Iraq, murdering Lebanon’s pro-democracy community into submission, killing Israelis, arming Hezbollah, hosting Hamas, and so on. This is intended not only to make Syria into a bigger player than it would otherwise be, but allows Bashar to maintain his illegitimate police state of a regime by constantly invoking foreign threats. And it ensures that the United States and other western powers will continuously drag themselves to Syria to beg for cooperation. “The road to Damascus is a road to peace,” Nancy Pelosi famously declared on her visit in 2007, unintentionally confirming to Assad the wisdom of the mayhem he sponsors. This is like saying that the road to the brothel is a road to virginity.

In the Obama administration, there are a few people, like Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, who understand Syria. But foreign policy is run from the top. The person who doesn’t get it is the president, who seems confused by the failure of the region’s dictators and terrorists to respond constructively to his sensitive reorientation of American foreign policy. Right now he is stuck between his ideological commitments and the reality of their failure, and in the meantime the Middle East’s rogues are not waiting around for The One to figure out what level of nuance he ultimately wishes to pursue. They see naivety and irresolution, and they capitalize

Needless to say, Government Motors came up a little short despite their boasting:

Uncle Sam gave GM $49.5 billion last summer in aid to finance its bankruptcy. (If it hadn't, the company, which couldn't raise this kind of money from private lenders, would have been forced into liquidation, its assets sold for scrap.) So when Mr. Whitacre publishes a column with the headline, "The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full," most ordinary mortals unfamiliar with bailout minutia would assume that he is alluding to the entire $49.5 billion. That, however, is far from the case.

Because a loan of such a huge amount would have been politically controversial, the Obama administration handed GM only $6.7 billion as a pure loan. (It asked for only a 7% interest rate--a very sweet deal considering that GM bonds at that time were trading below junk level.) The vast bulk of the bailout money was transferred to GM through the purchase of 60.8% equity stake in the company--arguably an even worse deal for taxpayers than the loan, given that the equity position requires them to bear the risk of the investment without any guaranteed return. (The Canadian government likewise gave GM $1.4 billion as a pure loan, and another $8.1 billion for an 11.7% equity stake. The U.S. and Canadian government together own 72.5% of the company.)

But when Mr. Whitacre says GM has paid back the bailout money in full, he means not the entire $49.5 billion--the loan and the equity. In fact, he avoids all mention of that figure in his column. He means only the $6.7 billion loan amount.

And that's only part of the story. The fact is, the money GM is bragging they paid back is from a government financed escrow account.

As longtime readers know, I have enormous respect for the Democrats as masters of the politics of personal destruction. What a track record!

"Bushitler" ... "General Betray-Us" ... Excellent stuff, up there with Oscar Wilde. But this is, like, a whole new level: Bill Clinton is on the road, demonizing (and with an impressively straight face) half the American people as the express lane to ka-boom! And the poodle media are taking it seriously.

Meanwhile, Comedy Central – you know, the "hip" "edgy" network with Jon Stewart from whom "young" Americans under 53 supposedly get most of their news – just caved in to death threats. From a hateful 83-year-old widow who doesn't like Obamacare? Why, no! It was a chap called Abu Talhah al Amrikee, who put up a video on the Internet explaining why a "South Park" episode with a rather tame Mohammed joke was likely to lead to the deaths of the show's creators. Just to underline the point, he showed some pictures of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film director brutally murdered by (oh, my, talk about unfortunate coincidences) a fellow called Mohammed. Mr. al Amrikee helpfully explained that his video incitement of the murder of Matt Stone and Trey Parker wasn't really "a threat but just the likely outcome." All he was doing, he added, was "raising awareness" – you know, like folks do on Earth Day. On Earth Day, lame politicians dig a hole and stick a tree in it. But aggrieved Muslims dig a hole and stick a couple of comedy writers in it. Celebrate diversity!

Faced with this explicit threat of violence, what did Comedy Central do?

Why, they folded like a Bedouin tent. They censored "South Park," not only cutting all the references to Mohammed but, in an exquisitely post-modern touch, also removing the final speech about the need to stand up to intimidation.

When our family immigrated, people were leaving the "old country" for the new world; for economic opportunity, for freedom, to escape stultifying governments. We are becoming more and more like those lands that we left.Read more »

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Before Obama was elected, before he was nominated for President, he attended a dinner honoring Khalidi, a anti-Semitic Palestinian radical. The LA Times has a tape of the proceedings but refuses to release it. Many people believe that what Obama said at that at dinner will give us a revealing look at what he believes regarding the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews.

Rashid Khalidi — a Palestinian-American historian known for his strong pro-Palestinian opinions — is currently the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia and director of that university’s Middle East Institute. After Khalidi received this Columbia appointment in 2003, a farewell dinner party was held in his honor in Chicago. A videotape was made of that party where many good things were said about the Palestinian cause and many bad things about Israel. Then Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama was in attendance, as were, some say, William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

As many others have noted, we know almost nothing about Barack Obama other than what he has told us in his two biographies. In other words, what we know about his prior to his inauguration is what he has decided to tell us about himself. There is a controversy about his birth, his education, his job history, his legislative history, his friends and associates, his religion, etc.

JM Haynes comments:

1. Get Glenn Beck to serve it up, for what it’s worth. We were misled during the campaign! Who knew? When the Administration airs its next manufactured grievance against Netanyahu, or debuts its own rumored road map for peace, you’d have a legitimate, timely, issue which would, at least — and probably at best — be just a little harder to spin as just another disgruntled “birther” assault.

My advice to you, however, is not to let your “obsession” with the video blind you to something far more “important and newsworthy.”

The fact that folks are left to imagine what might have been said at the Khalidi dinner is more feature than bug, if you consider the possibility that Wallsten has, indeed, already described the most potentially controversial contents of the video. This whole affair, IMO, is just one more emblematic stop along the way in a much larger saga — one which ultimately transcends the question of where Obama’s putatively hidden sympathies lie in this particular instance. Anyone who reads the news can suss that out.

The truly epic story in the offing will lay bare the phenomenally successful ways and means by which the Obama slate was wiped almost completely clean. Who disappeared his paper trail in the Illinois legislature? Who persuaded those holding records which could not be expunged to secure them under lock and key? Where are all the usual disaffected, anonymous sources who routinely step up to the mike? There are plenty of ways the Khalidi “whistleblower” could conceivably be identified if the LA Times video were released; we should be asking about the consequences of exposure he fears.

The scandal here is custom made for BigGovernment and BigJournalism combined. Unless Deep Throat 2.0 emerges from the shadows, no single investigative reporter, nor any loose affiliation of bloggers, will ever be able to walk Obama back through the Chicago labyrinth. It will take dedicating boots to the ground, finding strings to pull in lieu of issuing subpoenas, supplying resources and protection from organized intimidation. Everything Breitbart has brought to light, thus far, is small potatoes in comparison to the Obama backstory that no one else seems willing or able to pursue.

We know more about the output of Sarah Palin's vagina than we do about Barack Hussein Obama. Yet he's President. Why is that?

One of the reasons Obama has fallen so far and so fast in the polls is that people are seeing a huge gap between what they thought they knew about him, and therefore what they believed he would do, and what he has actually said and done. The media were complicit in creating an image so far removed from reality that no matter how hard they try to maintain the fiction, reality has been allowed to overwhelm the spin. The Legacy media no longer have total control of the narrative which makes it impossible to maintain the image of a cool, post-partisan, post-racial superior being. He’s a radical pol with a racial chip on his shoulder and a habit of demeaning his opponents.

And it turns out that he may have a lot in common with the people who want to destroy Israel. So far there is zero evidence that this is not the case.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Meanwhile, Clegg has added credibility to his claim as an outsider and independent thinker by attacking the notion that the U.S. and Britain have a "special relationship." In a speech advocating a shakeup in relations, he called it "embarrassing the way Conservative and Labor politicians talk in this kind of slavish way about the special relationship." Clegg argued that, in fact, there are "profound differences" between the two nations. Noting that the Obama administration has already written off the idea that Britain is a special ally, Clegg concluded that "if they are moving on, why on earth don't we?"

As the Post's editors acknowledge, President Obama's behavior supports Clegg's assessment. And if Clegg's assessment is correct, so too is his conclusion. Unless there is something special about the relationship, Britain should not pay any particular heed to the interests and desires of the U.S. when it formulates policy and decides whether to support various U.S. projects, including military actions. I understand that Clegg, in fact, favors early withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.

The same principle applies to the rest of our allies. Israel is something of a special case because it is more dependent on the U.S. in certain key respects than countries like Britain. Still, it's inevitable that the Israeli government will soon realize (and, most likely, has realized already) that it cannot count on the U.S. as a partner, and that therefore the time has come to pay as little heed as possible to our prescriptions and demands.

Obama, meanwhile, seems too arrogant to recognize the blowback his arrogant, and indeed hostile, approach to our traditional allies is bound to produce. This is not surprising. Obama's policies towards our traditional allies are the product of attitude, not of calculation. He may well be temperamentally unable to calculate their costs.

Now that the world is belatedly waking up to the fact that President Obama lied his face off about the fiscal impacts of health care reform, maybe it's an appropriate time to point out that he's lying his face off about financial reform as well.

If there is any question ... any at all about the lies told about the Health Care fiasco, you need to see this.

James Lileks is a great writer. I hope he finds a permanent home at Pajamas Media. A sample:

If anyone wanted to make some money, they’d come up with a new bumper sticker for people who have QUESTION AUTHORITY plastered on their car. It would read HOW DARE YOU, and would go right in front of the old one.

The left’s amnesia over eight years of anti-Bush rhetoric is one thing; their willful contortion of tea party ideas is quite another. ... Politicians get up and say things designed to cause mass facepalming among the faithful, like when someone says the president should go back to Africa. But Sarah Palin ought to be able to use strong metaphors without someone accusing her of wanting to lead a militia into Congress. It’s called a “figure of speech.” Unless you believe that Martin Luther King was sleepwalking when he said “I have a dream.” Present tense! Words mean things!

Does anyone want to bet how much of the rest of the Health Care Bill estimates are pure bullshit? When the OMB scored this bill, were they told to assume "High Risk Pools" will cost $5 billion? Will the cost numbers explode before the bill is even implemented?

After recounting how Communist governments made snitches out of most people, Mark Steyn turns to modern England.

The United Kingdom is not (yet) a totalitarian regime, yet huge numbers of Britons have in effect signed on as informers to a politically correct Stasi, and with far greater enthusiasm than Gábor and György ever did. Last year, David Booker was suspended from his job at a hostel for the homeless in Southampton after a late-night chat with a colleague, Fiona Vardy, in which he happened to reveal that he did not believe in same-sex marriage or in vicars being allowed to wed their gay partners. Miss Vardy raised no objection at the time, but the following day mentioned the conversation to her superiors. They immediately suspended Mr. Booker from his job, and then announced that “this action has been taken to safeguard both residents and staff.”

Usually it takes a national government to spend itself into a debt measured in the trillions. Yet it comes as little surprise that the same profligacy that pervades the corridors of federal power infects this country's 87,000 state, county and municipal governments and school districts. By 2013, the amount of retirement money promised to employees of these public entities will exceed cash on hand by more than a trillion dollars.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney offered high praise Thursday for his decision to tell Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to "f--k himself."

In 2004, a year after the start of the Iraq war, Leahy approached Cheney while the vice president was on the Senate floor about his ties to military contractor Halliburton. Cheney ended the exchange by telling the Vermont senator to "f--k himself."

Cheney appeared on conservative comedian Dennis Miller's radio show Thursday. Miller thanked Cheney for "almost kicking Patrick Leahy’s ass," and Cheney responded with a chuckle.

"You’d be surprised how many people liked that," Cheney followed up. "That’s sort of the best thing I ever did."

Last week we wrote about both Ronald Lauder's open letter to President Obama and Elie Wiesel's open letter to an unnamed addressee. Both letters took issue with President Obama's diplomatic assault on Israel.

The Obama administration got the letters but didn't appreciate the message. Ron Radosh summarizes the letters and takes note of the Obama administration's response, via Haaretz: "'All these advertisements are not a wise move,' one senior American official told Haaretz."

This is the channel that features Jon Stewart. Tought talking, "F" bomb trhowing Jon Stewart. Where the young and the hip get their news.

An episode of “South Park” that continued a story line involving the Prophet Muhammad was shown Wednesday night on Comedy Central with audio bleeps and image blocks reading “CENSORED” after a Muslim group warned the show’s creators they could face violence for depicting that holy Islamic prophet. Revolution Muslim, a group based in New York, wrote on its Web site that the “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker “will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh” for an episode shown last week in which a character said to be the Prophet Muhammad was seen wearing a bear costume. Mr. Van Gogh was slain in Amsterdam in 2004 after making a film that discussed the abuse of Muslim women in some Islamic societies.

On Friday, Mark Steyn, who really is fearless, having faced down the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the biggest threat to free speech on the North Amnerican continent, commented on the sickening display of cowardice by the so-called "Comedy Channel" in the face of intimidation by followers of the "Religion of Peace."

This is one reason why I read Kate McMillan. Responding to a reader who points out "if you make joke of prophet Mohamad and draw his picture there is 60% percent some one kill you", Kate writes:

There's the difference between an "extremist" and a "moderate".

The "extremist" is the one with the death threat.

The "moderate" is the one who explains what you've done to deserve it.

And so it goes. Geert Wilders lives under 24-hour armed guard because Muslims want to kill him. But he's the one charged with incitement.

The mainstream media, Yale University Press and Comedy Central now accept that Islamic law applies to believers and infidels alike - at least in terms of representations of Mohammed and tame jokes about him. So what will be the next Islamic prohibition to be universalized? And what makes you think that at Restaurant Sharia you can order à la carte?

“By selectively censoring the blasphemers of South Park, these Comedy Central executives have displayed the steadfast conviction to stand up, courageously raise their voices, and beg not to have their heads chopped off. I am delighted to announce that in recognition of their courage, we will kill them last. Unless they are Jews.”

One commenter wrote:

Stupid Comedy Network...stick to making fun of those crazy Tea Klanners, it's safer.

NEW YORK -- The programming staff and Standards and Practices department of cable TV's Comedy Central have been named winners of the Al-Fatwahadeen Revolutionary Martyrs Anti-Defamation League's 2010 Anti-Blasphemy Courage Award.

"All too often, infidels in the media industry are cowards when it comes to obeying Islamic law," said League spokesmartyr Khalid Al-Mustapha. "By selectively censoring the blasphemers of South Park, these Comedy Central executives have displayed the steadfast conviction to stand up, courageously raise their voices, and beg not to have their heads chopped off. I am delighted to announce that in recognition of their courage, we will kill them last. Unless they are Jews."

The award, which also carries a basket of baklava and a $5 Target gift card, is scheduled to be given out at a ceremony in the World Trade Center construction hole.

Republicans are stepping up their criticism of the Securities and Exchange Commission following reports that senior agency staffers spent hours surfing pornographic websites on government-issued computers while they were supposed to be policing the nation’s financial system.

Is surfing the net for porn while on the government payroll a partisan issue? Apparently the Virginian Pilot editors who write the headlines thinks this puts the GOP in a bad light.

Friday, April 23, 2010

The recent NY Times poll and the recent legislation in Arizona have kicked the 'birther' question back into the news, so let's watch how the heirs of Woodward and Bernstein at the Times tackle this:

President Obama was born in Hawaii on Aug. 4, 1961. A scanned image of his birth certificate released during the 2008 presidential campaign says he was, and Hawaii’s health director and its registrar of vital statistics have confirmed it.

Despite all that, a substantial number of Americans are not convinced.

And away we go, with twenty-one paragraphs that never mention or attempt to illuminate the central issue vexing so many - there is a much more complete record of the circumstances of Obama's birth maintained in at the Hawaii Dept. of Health; they will not release that file to the general public, but will happily release it to a citizen with a "direct and tangible interest in the record", such as President Obama himself.

So why won't Obama just release the darn file? Is is possible that the most transparent Administration in history is fanning this particular partisan fire for their own ends? Why don't they end it, or at least make a good-faith attempt to do so?

And since I am asking silly questions, is it possible that the NY Times reporters are unaware that a more complete record exists and is being kept under wraps by Obama? Why don't they even want to see those records for themselves? [An example of the old-style Hawaiian birth certificate is here].Read more »

An Obama Treasury department official behind the consumer protection language in the proposed financial reform legislation is a former head of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), the advocacy wing of a non-profit community development lender funded by none other than John Paulson — the billionaire who worked with Goldman Sachs to package bad mortgages into securities and offer them on the market.

President Obama’s deputy assistant secretary for consumer protection Eric Stein served as senior vice president of CRL. He also served as the President/SEO of CRL’s parent network, the Center for Community Self-Help.

While both groups pitch themselves as non-profits interested in helping the disadvantaged, the organizations dealt in the very kind of advocacy that advocated mortgages for those who couldn’t afford them.

This guy is the respectable front version of the ACORN without the desire to fund whorehouses to employ underage South American girls.

Our lead item Monday, "Why the Left Needs Racism," seems to have struck a chord. One hostile response is especially interesting because it illustrates our point so effectively. It comes from MediaMutters.org, a formally independent group that produces propaganda for the Democratic Party:

First and foremost, it's remarkably insulting. The implication of Taranto's theory is that African-Americans aren't sophisticated or observant or intelligent enough to know real racism when they see it, and are thus continuously duped en masse into voting for Democrats. It couldn't be the case that black voters actually care about issues and have real reasons for voting Democratic, they're just puppets who are motivated by racial sentiments that Democrats prey upon. Taranto and his pals at Fox & Friends might think they're attacking the Democrats, but they're actually demeaning black voters.

It is a commonplace that politicians frequently make appeals based on fear. It hardly seems controversial to assert that fear of racism is not uncommon among black Americans. It would be surprising if it were otherwise at a time when the regime of systematic subjugation known as Jim Crow is still a living memory. We argued that politicians appeal to a fear that is widespread among their constituents--which is to say, they behave in a way typical of politicians.

MediaMutters' suggestion that black voters are "just puppets" is racist and repugnant. In this day and age, one hesitates to dignify such a foul idea by rebutting it, but since MediaMutters raised it, here goes: Black voters are just like other voters. They make their decisions based on a combination of reason and emotion--and on elevated emotions as well as base ones. (The item MediaMutters is attacking attributed black support for President Obama in part to "pride in the first black president," which we called "a normal and wholesome attitude.")

The smear artists of MediaMutters have put forward a racist idea and falsely imputed it to us in an effort to defame us as racist because we criticized Democratic politicians. This is one of the clearest examples we've seen of how the appeal to fear works.

At the first cry of "racism" an increasing number of people are no longer willing to duck for cover.

Racism seems to be an infection found increasingly on the Progressive side of the political spectrum.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

The bigotry of numberism and speciesism

One of the fun, albeit somewhat disheartening, things about having written a book about the encroachment of antidiscrimination laws on all aspects of civil society is watching hypotheticals your critics dismissed as “absurd” or “ridiculous hyperbole” turn into real cases. For example, while the Boy Scouts of America were sued for refusing to allow homosexual scoutmasters, what if a gay group was sued for discriminating against bisexuals? Shouldn’t organizations for gays and lesbians have the right to determine their membership policies? Come on, Professor Bernstein, enough with the ridiculous hyperbole!

I have found it fascinating to watch supposedly intelligent people dance around subjects which seem to be connected but which people are trying desperately to disassociate. Take the Catholic Church problem with pedophile priests and the Boy Scouts of American and their stand on gay members.Read more »

When your friends can't explain why they voted for Democrats, give them this list. They can then pick a reason.

10. I voted Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't.

9. I voted Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

8. I voted Democrat because Freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

7. I voted Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves.

6. I voted Democrat because I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.

5. I voted Democrat because I'm not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies through abortion so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

4. I voted Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits.

3. I voted Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the democrats see fit.

2. I voted Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.

1. I voted Democrat because my head is so firmly planted up my ass it's unlikely that I'll ever have another point of view.

The voice behind the Gieco gecko may not be one of the brightest bulbs in "Hollywood."

Why would the voice of Geico Insurance (“Save $50 dollars or more…”) attack the staff and followers of FreedomWorks as “mentally retarded?” Does he really think that the good men and women who make up the tea party movement – mothers and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren – are all potential murderers that will inevitably “actually kill someone?”

The assassin of Abraham Lincoln is known to every literate American. Yet thanks to a conspiracy of silence between the Democrats in government and Democrats in the press, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the financial assassins of the American financial systems is hidden away.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Wallison points out that in 2005 then-Senator Obama joined with his Democratic colleagues in stopping legislation that would have helped rein in the government-sponsored housing duo’s risky behavior:

The bill would have established a new regulator for Fannie and Freddie and given it authority to ensure that they maintained adequate capital, properly managed their interest rate risk, had adequate liquidity and reserves, and controlled their asset and investment portfolio growth.

These authorities were necessary to control the GSEs’ risk-taking, but opposition by Fannie and Freddie—then the most politically powerful firms in the country—had consistently prevented reform.

The date of the Senate Banking Committee’s action is important. It was in 2005 that the GSEs—which had been acquiring increasing numbers of subprime and Alt-A loans for many years in order to meet their HUD-imposed affordable housing requirements—accelerated the purchases that led to their 2008 insolvency. If legislation along the lines of the Senate committee’s bill had been enacted in that year, many if not all the losses that Fannie and Freddie have suffered, and will suffer in the future, might have been avoided.

Fannie and Freddie made it possible for banks and S&Ls to write "liar loans" to millions of borrowers by buying them as fast as they were created and re-selling them to unsuspecting investors. They were told to do so by Liberals in congress and in the oval office. Today the liars who still control the levers of government are shaking in fear lest their culpability should be brought out once they lose control of congress and the MSM loses control of the narrative.

This day in history

When we don't know but pretend to know we get in trouble. Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club discusses the pretend knowledge the led to the suspension of air travel in Europe after the volcano erupted. He quotes comments by Donald Rumsfeld that I consider some of the smartest ever made (but for which he was ridiculed in the press)

As we know,There are known knowns.There are things we know we know.We also knowThere are known unknowns.That is to sayWe know there are some thingsWe do not know.But there are also unknown unknowns,The ones we don’t knowWe don’t know.

It's when you don't know what you don't know that you get into real trouble.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Our pal Right Girl notices that respectable European publications are beginning to sound awfully like America Alone. For example, the Belgian weekly Le Vif/L'Express:

With a rapidly growing population, the capital of Belgium is already one of the most multicultural in Europe. Muslims are already a majority in some neighborhoods...

You don't say. And where's that likely to lead?

Brussels, overwhelmingly Muslim in 20 years? It can't be totally ruled out... Today, families with children - 'Whites' and of the middle class - are leaving the 19 municipalities of the Brussels Region, attracted by the convenience and low prices of the Walloon Brabant, Flemish Brabant and Hainaut provinces. The birth rates of immigrants, which is slightly higher than that of natives, and the international immigration (mainly through family reunification), compensate for this exodus and reinforces it. In reality, Brussels is experiencing what French demographer Michèle Tribalat calls a "process of demographic substitution". One population replaces another.

Which is pretty much what I said in America Alone - although my comparison of the native European exodus with the "white flight" from failing US cities in the Seventies seems more relevant than rosy-hued paeans to the "low prices of the Walloon Brabant".

But will that matter? For those who ask, Steyn has another question:

Here's my question for the left - for women, gays, "progressives" generally: Which currently Muslim city would you wish to live in? I don't just mean visit, or pass through for a couple of years. I love Amman and Cairo, but that's in part because I know I have a return ticket to New Hampshire. So in which Muslim city would you like to live permanently? Make your life, build a career, raise your kids. And, if you're having trouble answering, why do you think Brussels and Antwerp - and many other European cities - will turn out any different? At best, they'll be like Kuala Lumpur, living on the inheritance of the past and the commercial acumen of the non-Muslim population, but with hardcore Islamization remorselessly nibbling in from the edges. For a while, you'll be able to take advantage of "the low prices of the Walloon Brabant", but cultures in retreat quickly run out of places to retreat to.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

A new poll shows that nearly 80% of the country has little faith in the federal government, and nearly half says the government negatively affects their lives.

Why would this be? I can give you one answer: the head of federal government is black.

It’s the only explanation that makes sense. Right now the federals government is doing everything it can to help the economy and is about to give everyone free health care, thus logically everyone should love the government right now. Except, the president it black, so people are turning against it.

Who's Inciting the Violence?

Is there a liberal columnist or reporter who has not accused the Right of incitement to violence? Think hard, and send me their names. This morning I scanned an op-ed by Kathleen Parker on the subject and she named names: Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. She also gave credence to the claim that Tea Party demonstrators shouted racial slurs at black congressmen including “civil rights hero” John Lewis. The fact that not one scintilla of evidence can be produced to back up these claims does not stop Parker from repeating them.

Change of scene: in New Orleans an aide to Republican Governor Bobby Jindal is stomped by a gang and her leg broken in five places.

Change of scene: Rally in front of the offices of Russ Carnahan where SEIU thugs beat the crap out of a small black man selling “Don’t tread on me” symbols.

So who inspired these actual violent acts? A very strong case can be made by Parker’s arguments in her column. All it takes is one unhinged individual, she says, inspired by a national voice. Or how about a whole chorus of voices throughout the country? People like Parker, like Donald Luzatto, like Frank Rich, people like … oh hell … is there a Liberal columnist who has not written this column in one form or another over the last several months? And what is supposed to go on in the minds of the loons on the Left, the muscle in the streets, when they are told that there is a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy™ that is inciting the people they already hate and who have demonstrated that they are racists by calling John Lewis the “N” word? I’ll tell you what you get, and it’s not potential violence, it’s real and it’s here, in your face. It’s small black men and small white women lying bleeding in the street.

UPDATE 3: Rush Limbaugh asks: "What words did I say that brought Timothy McVeigh to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma City?" here in McVeigh's own words is the reason he set the bomb:

I chose to bomb a federal building because such an action served more purposes than other options. Foremost, the bombing was a retaliatory strike; a counter attack, for the cumulative raids (and subsequent violence and damage) that federal agents had participated in over the preceding years (including, but not limited to, Waco.) From the formation of such units as the FBI's "Hostage Rescue" and other assault teams amongst federal agencies during the '80's; culminating in the Waco incident, federal actions grew increasingly militaristic and violent, to the point where at Waco, our government - like the Chinese - was deploying tanks against its own citizens.

Click on the link to read the whole thing. McVeigh rails against the government's action in Waco, in its wars in Serbia and Iraq. Not a word about Limbaugh. That comes from the Left.

The Iron Rail Book Collective, whose website and blog are covered with revolutionary and anti-capitalist rhetoric, hosted two flyers advertising the demonstration, and also an eight-page brochure filled with intense verbiage. It repeatedly stated that SRLC attendees were not welcome in New Orleans four years after Republicans had “drowned” the city, and called for “direct action” and “active resistance” against the conferees.

Members of the Iron Rail encouraged the protesters to join them in adjourning to Brennan’s, both through another set of flyers they issued on site and by use of a public-address system to “invite” their comrade demonstrators to march on the restaurant. That a relatively tame — if profane and obnoxious — protest turned unruly and dangerous at the eatery could be the result of strategic planning.

Bautsch has identified photos of an auburn-haired, “dirty-looking” protester from both the Hilton and Brennan’s demonstrations as looking “exactly” like the assailant the couple described to police, though she admitted she can’t positively identify the protester.

On the Iron Rail-produced brochure of the protest is a map of five hotels at which SRLC attendees were principally lodged during the conference. Two members of the Iron Rail Gang — Joanna Dubinsky and Daniel Mauch — took down YouTube videos and Facebook pages identifying them and their compatriots as having participated in the event last week after scrutiny of the Iron Rail commenced. Dubinsky is pictured in photos and video at both the Hilton and Brennan’s, speaking into the PA system while wearing a red-and-black anarcho-communist flag (which is also pictured on the Iron Rail website). Neither has come forward to deny having knowledge regarding the perpetrators of the attack.

None of this information seems to have piqued the curiosity of the local New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune. T-P reporting has focused on the NOPD’s initial police report, which is substantially incomplete. Local television and radio news outlets have shown a similarly incurious attitude toward the case. Outside of Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, to date no traditional national outlet has deigned to investigate what seems to be a pin in the balloon of the “right-wing violence” narrative.

Despite the non-stop rhetoric from the media about the effect of Conservative incitement of violence, when the violence happens - and comes from the Left - the story is not told. Why? Doesn't this event prove the media right about hate speech sparking violence? Of course violence against Conservatives is not what the media has been predicting, so this story doesn't fit the narrative. Beat a Conservative bloody? It's like that tree in the forest where there's nobody to hear it. Now we know. If it were up top the media, it doesn't make a sound.

Monday, April 19, 2010

It was not all that long ago that Donny Luzatto of the Virginian Pilot predicted that there would be bloodshed if protesters did not shut up. And coming from Luzatto, you know that he was telling the Tea party demonstrators to sit down and shut up. He specifically named Fox News and Glenn Beck as inciters to violence. I said at the time that Luzatto's editorial and those like his were actual incitements to violence on the part of partisans on his side. I could not have been more right.

The violence continues, and it's all coming from friends of Luzatto.

For more than a year, we have heard about putative violence from the Tea Party and right-wing homeland security threats, yet so far the only violence has come from the other side. The media has presumptively declared the Tea Partiers racists, yet the proof is strangely lacking. Andrew Breitbart has offered $100,000 for video proving that racist taunts were shouted at members of the Congressional Black Caucus, as alleged by the progressive left and its willing accomplices in the media. The money is still on the table.

The media has driven the violence towards the conservatives. They have spewed MoveOn and Organizing For America talking points. At some point won’t an adult in the newsrooms across America begin to question the narrative? When will the news directors start to challenge the assertions of the progressive left? At what point will the lies and the broken bones be enough?

So what is the latest unprovoked attack on a Republican?

The tragedy of the unprovoked attack on Allee Bautsch and Joe Brown in New Orleans recently is intensified by the media’s near-silence on the matter. In another example of its no-enemies-to-the-left mentality, the MSM has gone to ground. Not a word is issued in print condemning the attacks. No reporters are calling members of Congress, the White House or the head of the DNC for comment. No talking heads on television are pulling their chins and wondering if there’s a “climate of hate” loose in the French Quarter.

What we have here is effective MSM news blackout on a vicious, and most likely politically motivated attack. Has the fourth estate falling into such a swoon with the progressive talking points, that they too believe like the attackers that Ms. Bautsch was a “lil blond b*tch” and thus deserved the beating she got?

Here's the police report. Does this sound like the typical mugging, or more laike a hate crime directed against a small woman?

Shortly before 10:30 p.m., Mr. Brown and Ms. Bautsch left the restaurant and began walking towards St. Louis Street. Mr. Brown noted there were several protesters loitering in the area, but not nearly the number which had been present earlier. Soon after leaving the restaurant he heard “cat calls.” At an unknown point within the 400 block of Royal Street, both Mr. Brown and Ms. Bautsch then crossed from the Brennan’s side of the street to the Supreme Court side of the street.

They continued to walk towards St. Louis when Mr. Brown began to hear people behind him scream obscenities. Initially he was not sure if they were being directed at him and his girlfriend, of if they were simply the outbursts of drunken revelers.

As they neared the intersection, Mr. Brown state he heard subjects state things such as “Little blonde bitch,” “You’re a f——- faggot,” and “You think you’re f—— special.”

At this point, Mr. Brown realized these derogatory terms were being directed at Ms. Bautsch and him. He then requested she begin to walk faster toward the Omni-Royal hotel located at the intersection of St. Louis and Royal.

Mr. Brown also recalled the farther they got from the restaurant, the closer these subjects got to them. When they reached the corner of St. Louis and Royal, Mr. Brown and his date turned south on St. Louis.

It was at this time that one of the subjects pushed him into the iron gate that surround the State Supreme Court (building). He then fell to the ground, and one of the attackers got on top of him and began to attack him. Mr. Brown stated as he was pushed to the ground, Ms. Bautsch was also either pushed down or fell down near where he was. As he fought to get his attacker off of him, he heard his girlfriend cry out in pain. She then repeatedly stated, “Oh my god, my leg is broken.”

All of the attackers then ran away in an unknown direction.

The attackers did not take Ms. Bautsch' purse.

We will not hear a peep from the editorial page of the Virginian Pilot condemning this unprovoked attack. Meanwhile, the attack on the Right goes on, with Bill Clinton blaming Rush Limbaugh for violence past and yet to come. Somehow violence is always predicted to come from the Right, but somehow actual violence comes from the Left.

It's not Leftists who need police protection on the nations' campuses but people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Women like Ann Coulter have their college addresses cancelled because of Left wing violence. When was the last time a Liberal was driven from the stage in fear of their lives?

The media is always predicting violence from the Right that somehow results in a Conservative woman's leg being stomped on repeatedly and broken in five place.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

The risks to the country of Obama dropping too fast in the polls

There is an old folk saying about the dangers of a trapped rat. The Obama administration is losing favor so rapidly that soon it may only have the support of part of the Bloods and the Crips. Congress is setting new records for unfavorable ratings and for the first time since polls have been conducted a majority not only favors voting out other people’s congress critters but also their own.

People lose their inhibitions when they have nothing to lose. If memory serves me right, Solzhenitsyn wrote that he never felt free in the Soviet Union until he was imprisoned in the Gulag. When a man has nothing more to lose, what can he be deprived of?

The risk America runs is that the Left become convinced that it will be voted out in November. Not maybe, but definitely. They are currently in charge of all branches of the government. There is a possibility that they become so convinced of their loss in the upcoming election they will “go berserk” legislatively.

Waiting for the Reichstag fire

The other day we had Slick Willy getting all lathered up about "'hatriot' groups, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters." Now we have Robert Mueller, head of the EffaBeeEye, making it official:

Fifteen years after the Oklahoma City bombing, the specter of domestic terrorism has returned to haunt the Obama administration, with a warning from the FBI that “home-grown and lone-wolf extremists” now represent as serious a threat as Al Qaeda and its affiliates, The Times reported on Saturday.

Wow. I own a gun or three. I might go participate in a 2nd Amendment march today. Does that make me more dangerous than a jihadette with a bomb in her burqa?

We have guys with their jockeys full of Semtex buying airline tickets with cash, and the feds are busy getting spun up about bubbas in Mossy Oak angry about taxes. Way to keep your eye on the ball...

Of course, with this level of fixation, I'm starting to worry about them looking for a van der Lubbe; if their devil doesn't exist, they may have to invent one.

Victor Davis Hanson comes up with 7 reasons for the actions of the Obama administration.

Why, when we owe $12 trillion, would the Obama administration set out budgets that will ensure our collective debt climbs to $20 trillion? Why are we borrowing more money, when Medicare, Social Security, the Postal Service, Amtrak, etc. are all insolvent as it is?

If it had been militia types running around the woods in Michigan, or Tea Partiers the hysterical bedwetters writing for the mainstream media would be in full cry predicting an armed rebellion by "violent right wing extremists." But since it was none of these .... never mind. In fact, cops getting killed by violent black gangs is part of the urban landscape. No reason for comment and no need to worry. According to the pundits, it's white middle class business people and moms that are the real threat to our country.

Meanwhile, remember how the left went crazy over Ari Fleischer’s advice to “watch what you say?” But now Bill Clinton is comparing Tea Partiers to Tim McVeigh and proffering rather Fleischeresque advice. Maybe Clinton should watch what he says, when it comes to branding large numbers of nonviolent Americans as terrorists. But this statement serves as a useful reminder to those who have come to think of Clinton as some sort of cuddly, not-so-bad figure. He was a demagogue who would say whatever he thought might work when he was President, and he still is.

It worked for Clinton. He rescued his Presidency, regained his popularity by blaming the Oklahoma City bombing on Rush Limbaugh, and by association ... Republicans. Of course he could only get away with this with the compliant media. But then, he knew he had that.

One thing that Democrats always know is that the media covers their backs, trumpets their charges without ever questioning them and covers up their sins. The Tea Party demonstrators using the "N" word in front of the congressional black caucus is now accepted wisdom in newsrooms throughout the country. No evidence despite thousands of recording devices, but "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"